25 Reasons Country Is Chic Right Now

A salute to the people, places, and products redefining rustic today

Mar 7, 2011

Philip Friedman / Studio D

We've never doubted country's cool quotient, but suddenly everybody else seems to have gotten the memo, from hip designers to famous chefs. So we figured it was high time to salute the people, places, and products redefining rustic today.

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Philip Friedman / Studio D

Repurposing the Past

More than just another pretty frame, this chestnut rectangle represents the push to recycle wood from historic, demolition-bound Kentucky buildings. Longwood Antique Woods, in Lexington, also turns the lumber into flooring, furniture, and more.

Humble handicraft meets out-of-this-world vision in the work of Madison, Wisconsin, artist Leah Evans. Evans begins with aerial photographs and satellite images, then reinterprets the bird's-eye views using salvaged textiles (in this case, a vintage kimono and plaid shirt) to create high art with earthy appeal.

The grassroots website sparks an online arts-and-crafts renaissance. Before Brooklynite Robert Kalin launched his virtual bazaar in 2005, handmade wares were hardly big business. Now Etsy.com boasts more than 7.2 million users and $314.3 million in commerce annually, which means that artisans can earn a full-fledged living — while the rest of us gain access to unique goods like these ceramics from Whitney Smith and dish towels from Michelle Brusegaard.

With the recent rise in urban farming, folks from Los Angeles to Little Rock have equipped their backyards and rooftops with chicken coops — begetting a distinctly contemporary conundrum: Who's gonna care for all those birds when their hobbyist owners travel? Enter pals Sharon Rowland and Rhonda Piasecki. Their start-up, Just Us Hens, answers the call — in Portland, Oregon, at least — feeding and exercising citified cluckers for $15 a day. "Hanging out with the chickens is a really nice experience," says Piasecki. "Sometimes I'm like, 'Wow, I can't believe I get paid for this.'"

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Helen Norman

Venerable Catalogs Stage a Fashionable Comeback

L.L. Bean and Lands' End shake the dust off their stalwart images by mining the best of the brands' archives.

Lands' End Rope belt In addition to introducing a sassy secondary line, Canvas, the 48-year-old clothier has also refreshed its core offerings. To wit: this cotton-and-leather waist-cincher, which draws on Lands' End's nautical origins as a sailboat-gear merchant.
($39.50; landsend.com)

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Caroline Arber

Crisp Linens on a Clothesline

"I grew up in the country in Alabama. Now I live in the city in California, but I still have a clothesline. There's nothing like the smell and feel of crisp linens right off the line."
— Shelby Lynne; musician, Tears, Lies, and Alibis

Jere Gettle, 30, of Mansfield, Missouri, is on a mission to turn heirloom gardening from a mail-order hobby into a multi-media lifestyle. In the past two years his company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, has opened retail stores in Petaluma, California, and Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Plus, he and wife Emilee spread the gospel of heritage plants via Facebook and Twitter. Not surprisingly, the couple also harbors a soft spot for more anachronistic means of getting the message out: This fall, Hyperion will publish the Gettles' first book, The Heirloom Life.

Dave Matthews serves on Farm Aid's board — and lives out its MO on 1,000-plus acres. In 2002, seven years after playing his first Farm Aid benefit, Matthews bought a vast spread in Scottsville, Virginia, then safeguarded it against future development with a conservation easement.

Now an organic farm — which donates 25 percent of each harvest to area soup kitchens and food banks — those 1,261 acres comprise only part of the picture. Ten miles away, the musician grows grapes, bottling them into an astonishingly good, affordable chardonnay.

Cutting boards made by Amish woodworkers in Ohio. Throw pillows stitched by a women's collaborative in New Mexico. A dining table built from cedar planks that once formed a New York City water tower. None of the pieces in the Manhattan home shop Canvas rolled off an assembly line — and nearly all of them have interesting backstories.

That's because owner Andrew Corrie goes to great lengths to ensure that his items are ethically sourced, handcrafted, or incorporate recycled materials. "We want to be as sustainable as possible," says Corrie, "but we don't approach it in a lecturing way. It's just as important to make sure that these things are lovely, that people will want to live with them for a long time."

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Courtesy of Cochon

Rabbit Dishes

"I'm thinking rabbit is the next 'other white meat.' Cochon in New Orleans dishes up fried rabbit livers, rabbit sausage is on the menu at Dallas's Smoke, and I recently ate a great fried-rabbit po'boy at Southern Fried Rabbit in Columbia, Mississippi."
— John T. Edge; director, Southern Foodways Alliance

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Steve Offutt

Slow-Food Snow Cones

Imagine biting into one of these icy treats, and rather than coming away with an electric-blue tongue, you discover bits of blackberry, hints of ginger, and...is that basil?

Welcome to Fresher than Fresh, the brainchild of Kansas City, Missouri, graphic designer Lindsay Laricks. Laricks sweetens her snow cones with honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, or cane sugar, then serves the whole shebang in a bio-degradable cup. As if that weren't enough, she operates out of a renovated 1957 Shasta trailer scored on eBay.

"Remember when you'd hear the ice-cream truck, and your heart would start racing?" Laricks asks. "That's what I want to create for people."

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Truly Natural Beauty

These days, many cosmetics companies lay claim to eco-consciousness, but Rhode Island's Farmaesthetics wears its name honestly. Not only does founder Brenda Brock insist upon organic ingredients from American farms, she's the seventh-generation scion of an agricultural family.

No, Brad Kittel doesn't expect a family of four to live full-time in less than 400 square feet. His Tiny Texas Houses do, however, aim to prove that we could hog a lot less space (and natural resources), by fitting a bedroom, living-dining room, full bath, and kitchenette into an area that would barely contain the typical master suite.

"I want to demonstrate that we can have zero-carbon-footprint housing that's comfort-able and beautiful," says Kittel, whose outfit, based in the town of Luling, relies almost entirely on materials rescued from other builders' teardowns. Oh, and did we mention that prices start at $32,000? Meet your new guest cottage.

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Jessica Antola

This is What Today's Farmer Looks Like

Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 29, manages a 100-acre farm in New York's Hudson Valley. She also works hard urging other members of her generation to keep the agriculture profession growing strong.

Three years ago, Fleming founded the Greenhorns, a nonprofit organization with the goal of recruiting and supporting farmers "57 years old or fresher." So far, she's corralled some 3,000 members across the nation by hosting mixers, workshops, and other events. Next up: a Greenhorns documentary.

Browsing at one of Billy Reid's six fashion boutiques, located in New York City and throughout the South, feels akin to coming home. Though Reid's apparel garners tons of buzz (GQ named him 2010's Best New Menswear Designer and, yes, he dresses women, too), his stores are furnished with comfy sofas, tattered rugs, and aged portraits.

Linger long enough and a salesperson might even offer you a glass of sweet tea. Little surprise, then, that this Louisiana native chose country clothier Stetson for his latest high-profile collaboration.

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Thayer Allyson Gowdy

Biscuits and Gravy

"My favorite place to get biscuits and gravy is Animal in Hollywood, where they serve 'em topped with foie gras. It ain't Grandma's, but it's mighty fine!"
— Jayma Mays; actress, Glee

Since locals began congregating over apple-and peach-packed dessert, they've initiated two community-improvement programs: Pecans!, a small, teen-run business based on one of the state's most prolific crops, and BikeLab, which makes cycles available to kids who otherwise couldn't afford them. Meanwhile, the eatery's menu has expanded to include burgers, soup, and pizza.

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Sara Remington

Preserving a Lost Art

Some people whip up a batch of jam in order to make the most of fruit about to go bad. Rachel Saunders is not some people. In fact, you could say that canning's a bit of an obsession for this Oakland cook, who tested recipes for 10 (!) years before launching her Blue Chair Fruit Company in 2008, with flavors that range from blueberry and apricot to cardamom-orange and fig-ginger.

Last year, Saunders took things a step further by penning The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook ($35; Andrews McMeel), a definitive, 3.6-pound collection of almost 120 recipes. For jam. That's right, only jam.

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Lucinda Williams

This month, the woman who practically invented the alt-country genre releases her 11th album, Blessed, and tours to support it (visit lucindawilliams.com for concert dates).

Wendy Schultz Wubbels doesn't have anything against people — in fact, the Williamsburg, Virginia, artist hand-cuts plenty of proper paper profiles. But it's her Windsor chairs, garden tools, and dogs that leave us begging for more.

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